Non-Profit Raises Awareness With Geotargeted Twitter Ads
By
R. J. Talyor

Many organizations that support beloved outdoor and natural attractions have the same challenge and opportunity. How do you tap into a fan base that will likely support your cause when you don’t know who that audience is, and they don’t know who you are? Using the power of location based social media intelligence, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail engaged with thousands of people that were previously unreachable.

The Trail

The Indianapolis Cultural Trail: A Legacy of Gene and Marilyn Glick is an 8-mile world class urban bike and pedestrian path in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. The trail connects neighborhoods, cultural districts, and entertainment amenities while serving as the downtown hub for central Indiana’s vast greenway system. The non-profit organization, Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc., works to manage, maintain, and promote the trail to ensure it continues to exist as a world class public space for residents and visitors of Indianapolis.

The Problem

Thousands of people walk, ride, and run along the trail every day, but many didn’t know that a non-profit organization maintains and manages the trail. The organization communicated with trail goers who had proactively engaged via email and social media, but had trouble targeting the right people with the right messages.

The organization’s primary goals were to raise awareness about the trail and drive e-newsletter subscriptions. But unless trail goers had offered up their contact information, there wasn’t an easy way to engage them.

The Solution

Kären Haley, Executive Director of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, was already working to successfully monitor social media along the trail, and was eager to find out how else the platform could help her organization. By using current and historical social data from sections along the path, the geotargeted segments of trail goers were identified. Various ad campaigns with targeted messages encouraged trail goers to sign up for the trail e-newsletter and presented Cultural Trail information to raise awareness.

The engagement exceeded past campaigns and industry averages. The geotargeted ad campaigns resulted in 65% higher impressions and 31% more engagements than traditional targeting. The number of link clicks increased significantly, and the number of email e-newsletter signups more than doubled. The geotargeted ads proved to be effective marketing strategies for the trail, with the overall cost per acquisition decreasing by 67%.

In addition to expanding the reach of messages and reducing the cost of targeted acquisitions, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail team was able to analyze customer engagement and determine which types of images and messages were most effective. The data our platform provided helped to strategically target trail goers and gain better insights.

Location based social intelligence adds a groundbreaking new dimension to social ads, particularly for organizations supporting natural attractions like the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. Geotargeting ads increases the power of any ad campaign by focusing in on an audience who we know is already interested in a specific place or based on the places they go, and that may be interested in a specific offer.

R.J. Talyor is Vice President, Product Management for location based intelligence leader Geofeedia.